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His head snapped into motion with a slight shake and his words were slow, measured. “I didn’t see it. I stayed in the tavern. And I was halfway through my next brandy when a man came in, reporting a body two streets away. I knew it was Morton before I set foot out of the tavern. And it was.”
The answer she both wanted and didn’t want.
A deep breath that refused to sink past her throat sat in her mouth and she slid down off her horse, her look leaving him.
Without thought, the reins dropped from her hands and her feet went into motion, walking away from him, moving through the trees toward the sound of the water.
Past oaks and into a grove of willow trees, their branches stretching down toward the river.
Wes hadn’t witnessed it. Hadn’t stood by and let it happen.
He had let Morton walk out of a tavern alone. That was all.
Whatever was waiting for Morton on the other side of that door was his own making, she had to admit, as hard as it was to bear.
That Morton had survived for as long as he had was because of Wes. A burden that Wes never should have taken on.
Her toes reached the edge of the bank where the earth had collapsed, swallowed by the hungry swirls of the river, and she stopped. The long wispy branches of the willows surrounding her swayed in the slight wind, a slow dance about her.
Her arms wrapped around her middle and she stared at the churning of the water. It moved fast, spring storms sending the water level high and turbulent.
She wasn’t ready for this. Wasn’t ready to have to let Morton go like this. To know how he really was, how he’d destroyed everything in his life and how she’d never been able to veer him from that path. He was her brother, the one constant her entire life. The one that always saw past her long limbs and awkward height. The one that could make her smile within minutes of walking into a room. That was the brother, the man she’d loved. Not the philanderer, not the lewd man he was when he lived in London.
Silent, stealthy, Wes’s presence filled the air behind her.
She knew it was him without a glance behind her because the cold spiking her spine had warmed. Even from a distance, the heat of Wes always reached her, stretching out across the void of air to wrap her.
Protected.
He’d always made her feel safe.
Her fingers wrapped under her arms pressed into her ribcage as soft words left her mouth. “Why did you tell me, Wes? You could have hidden it from me forever.”
A sigh, and his voice, rough, wrapped around her from behind. “I tell you everything. There isn’t a thing I was going to hold back from you. Ever. I was always going to tell you. But I was going to wait until we were at Seahorn—wait until you were safe.”
Her eyes closed and she gave a slight shake of her head. “You didn’t kill him.”
“I’ll not argue it with you, Laney.”
“But I will argue it with you.” She turned around to him, her voice raw. “You didn’t kill him. Morty has been—was on this path since our father died. It did something to him—broke something in him so deep and so severely that he was never going to recover. Never going to become the man that he wanted to be. That I wanted him to be.”
At the edge of the small clearing, Wes stood between two willows, the leaves along the long branches brushing his wide shoulders. “That has always been you—your hope for the lost souls.” His hand twitched at his side, but other than that, he made no motion. “But you’re lying to yourself again. I did what I did and he died because of me.”
“No, he lived because of you, Wes. The last seven months, you were there at the end—you gave him more time than I think he rightly wanted. You were there so he wasn’t alone. ” She took one step toward him as her gaze drifted downward to the sparse grasses dotting the ground between them. “I lied to myself for a number of years about what Morty was. Lies I told myself because I wanted to hope. Had to believe in him.” Her look lifted to him. “He was my brother. I had to believe in him.”
His eyes locked into hers, the heat in them searing through her belly and into her soul. “It’s because you’re stubborn, Laney. Loyal—the crazy kind of loyal that can get a person killed. Once you love something it never ends.”
A rough laugh bubbled into her throat, dissolving in the tightness wrapping about her neck. She shook her head, then lifted her gaze to the sky brushing the tops of the wispy willows. “You don’t know that about me.”
“I do. How many times should you have shunned your brother? How many times did he disappoint? You. You love and you love forever.”
Against herself, against every intention she’d hoped to have, her gaze dropped to him.
{ Chapter 22 }
Wes stayed the exact same distance away in the willows. Not moving closer. Not moving away.
Good. She needed him there. In that exact spot.
